The fabrication of a semiconductor device is performed in the coating and developing system, an aligner, an etching device and so on installed in a factory. For example, in the coating and developing system, a plurality of processing units such as a resist coating unit, a developing unit, a heating processing unit and the like, and a substrate carrier unit and the like are mounted. A photolithography process in the fabrication of the semiconductor device is performed by sequentially carrying a substrate to respective processing units by the substrate carrier unit and giving predetermined processing to the substrate in respective processing units.
When some trouble including the failure occurs in the above-described coating and developing system, a worker of a factory where the coating and developing system is installed needs to cope with the trouble. The worker also needs to perform a periodical maintenance for the coating and developing system.
However, since the factory worker is not an engineer who fabricates the coating and developing system itself, he/she usually is not knowledgeable about the coating and developing system. Thus, when the trouble occurs in the coating and developing system, the worker in the side of the factory cannot make an appropriate response in many cases. In such case, the factory worker conventionally entrusts the treatment of the trouble to a manufacturer of the coating and developing system. A person in charge working at the entrusted manufacturer gives an instruction by means of the telephone or the facsimile, or visits the factory where the coating and developing system is installed and copes with the trouble by himself/herself.
However, when the person of the manufacturer gives the instruction by the telephone or the facsimile, the detailed information cannot be given or received between each other so that the trouble cannot be dealt with appropriately and immediately. When the person of the manufacturer visits the factory, it takes time to arrive there so that the immediate response cannot be made in many cases. And further, when some troubles occur in plural places at the same time, plural persons in charge have to be sent. In this case, since there definitely exists the difference between the coping abilities of respective persons in charge, the quality of the response of trouble sometimes varies. In order to solve the problems, a remote maintenance system for operating the coating and developing system from a remote place and solving the trouble of the coating and developing system using a communication network such as an Internet, and a LAN (local area network) can be proposed. According to the remote maintenance system, a skilled person in charge at the manufacturer can cope with the trouble or the periodical maintenance immediately and appropriately.
The operation from the remote place is the operation from the place not seen. If the person in charge at the manufacturer who is in the remote place drives the coating and developing system without knowing that the worker approaches the coating and developing system in the factory, the worker is involved in a risk of being injured by a touch of worker with a moved member by the driving. In addition, when a third person approaches the substrate processing apparatus without knowing that the remote operation is performed during the absence of the worker of the substrate processing apparatus from the field, the third person has the risk to be injured by a sudden driving. To secure the safety of the remote operation, some kind of measures need to be taken.